Over 27,000 attendees gathered this week in Las Vegas at Cisco Live 2017 to hear the latest news, expert insights and learn about the company's future direction.
Here are the top stories that came out of the event.
Cisco Spark's AI Future
During a Facebook Live Q&A session, Rowan Trollope, senior VP and general manager of Cisco IoT and Applications, was asked about the future of Spark and artificial intelligence.
“We think every meeting should have an assistant taking notes, but we can’t always have that [and that’s where AI comes in],” Trollope replied.
“We’re moving down the path of having AI assistants show up in our meeting and Spark messaging. [Cisco] recently acquired Mind Meld, a conversational AI platform, and we’re embedding that into Spark, where you’ll soon be able to ask the conference room to start recording [and listening]. This will make it possible to have the bots taking notes and intelligently schedule things,” He said.
In other Cisco Spark news, the recent release of Control Center 7.0 allows Spark users to integrate the product with Cisco Jasper, a separate IoT product from the San Jose Calif.-based company's portfolio.
Cisco and Apple's Continued Partnership
Apple first announced its relationship with Cisco in August 2015, when CEO Tim Cook revealed, “together with Cisco, we believe we can give businesses the tools to maximize the potential of iOS and help employees become even more productive using the devices they already love.”
Following the opening keynote on day one of Cisco Live 2017, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Cook discussed their continued collaboration.
"Tim and I just spent the last couple hours together after the keynote, and we see that first of all, we built a foundation proving that we can work together in creating innovation for our customers by working together on the same path — and we actually identified a few more opportunities in the last two hours alone," Robbins told media.
During the keynote, Robbins unveiled the company is developing a Security Connector application for iOS. Expected for a fall 2017 release, the Cisco Security Connector app is designed to provide deep visibility, control and privacy for iOS devices by offering organizations a granular view of what is happening on enterprise-owned mobile devices.
The app will focus on keeping iOS users from accessing malicious websites, whether on corporate Wifi networks, public networks or using cellular data. Also, Cisco’s app will deliver safeguards that meet auditor risk and compliance requirements, such as encrypting Internet (DNS) requests.
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Introducing Cisco Kinetic and Cisco ETA
Cisco also announced the arrival of Cisco Kinetic, an Internet of Things operations platform.
According to Rowan Trollope, Kinetic can be used for “everything from robot arms to factory pumps” to speed the process from proof of concept to implementation.
And finally, building on the major updates unveiled last week to its Digital Network Architecture (DNA) portfolio, Cisco unveiled its latest weapon in the fight against cyberattacks, Cisco Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA). Cisco ETA is a new network that can recognize intent, mitigate threats through encryption and learn over time. ETA is one of the eight capabilities included in the DNA portfolio.
The intent based networking technology is “powered by intent and informed by context and intuition.”
Robbins stressed security during his keynote, acknowledging the uptick in recent cyberattacks and renewing the company's commitment to security moving forward.
"We have to ensure we're building security into everything we do," he told the Cisco Live audience.
Were you at Cisco Live 2017? Tell us about your Las Vegas experience in the comments below.